‘Death to Ahed Tamimi’: Israeli settlers vandalize Nabi Saleh

Graffiti reading "Death to Ahed Tamimi" left by Israeli settlers in the village of Nabi Salah (Photo: Jaclynn Ashly)

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Bethlehem, occupied West Bank — On Thursday night, when residents of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank were sound asleep in their homes, Israeli settlers crept through the village’s streets, vandalizing walls with graffiti threatening jailed teen activist Ahed Tamimi and her family.

Some of the graffiti reads: “Death to Ahed Tamimi,” “There’s no place in this world for Ahed Tamimi,” and another demanding that the Tamimi family be “kicked out of the country.”

Graffiti in Nabi Saleh reading “There is no place for Ahed Tamimi in this world.”

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, told Mondoweiss that none of the village’s residents had seen the settlers enter the village, but that the incident occurred at some point after 1 a.m. “The settlers wrote that Ahed should be killed in order to scare the residents in Nabi Saleh,” he said.

Micky Rosenfeld, spokesperson for the Israeli police, told Mondoweiss that “police units were called into Nabi Saleh after reports of graffiti being sprayed in the village.” He added that the police had opened an investigation into the incident.

Bassem told Mondoweiss that a group of settlers also stated on social media that they would wait outside Israel’s HaSharon prison on the day Ahed gets released and then kill the teen.

“It makes me scared for my daughter,” Bassem said. “Not only is she Palestinian, but her face has become so recognizable that everyone knows exactly who she is and what she looks like.”

‘Escalating to another level ’

Israel’s illegal Halamish settlement sits on a hilltop adjacent to Nabi Saleh. Dozens of hectares of the village’s lands were confiscated in order for Israel to build the settlement.

From Bassem’s home, a large swimming pool can be seen on the roof of one of these American-esque housing units that dot the land.

A view of the Halamish settlement from outside Bassem Tamimi’s home.

This is the location where Ahed threw her now infamous slap, which transformed the teen into an international icon for the experiences of Palestinian children under Israel’s more than half-century military occupation.

Shortly before Ahed confronted the Israeli officials outside her home, her 15-year-old cousin had been severely wounded after being shot point-blank in the face with a rubber bullet.

A video of the incident — where Ahed is seen slapping and hitting two Israeli officials — went viral, and Israelis created a social media storm demanding the arrest of Ahed.

Ahed and her mother Nariman were subsequently arrested for the incident and now face numerous charges, including alleged assault and incitement. They have been held for nearly two months in Israel’s HaSharon prison.

Since the slap incident, at least nine other residents have been arrested from the village, mostly during overnight Israeli army raids. On January 3, Musab Tamimi, 17, a distant relative of Ahed, was killed by Israeli forces in Nabi Saleh’s sister village of Deir Nitham.

“We are used to dealing with the Israeli army attacking our homes and raiding the village,” Manal Tamimi, a relative of Ahed, told Mondoweiss. “But it’s escalating to another level, where even the settlers are participating now.”

She added that this incident has created an “even more dangerous” situation for the village.

‘We have to be more careful’

When the village began their weekly protests against Israel’s occupation in 2009, attacks from settlers residing in Halamish escalated, with hundreds of Nabi Saleh’s olive trees being burned and destroyed by settlers.

According to Bassem, after an incident where Israeli settlers attempted to light the village’s mosque on fire, residents developed a strategy to prevent settlers from approaching the village.

They created village watch patrols, in which residents would wander the outskirts of the village and warn other residents if settlers or soldiers were seen.

However, nowadays, village residents typically notify each other on social media or call one another when settlers are spotted near the village, prompting village residents to throw rocks and roll burning tires towards them in an effort to prevent them from approaching.

The village, home to some 600 residents, is small enough that other times residents need only to stand on their roofs and scream “settlers! Settlers!”

But the settler incursion Thursday night left the village feeling uneasy. “No one knows how or when they entered the village,” Manal said.

“We will have to be much more careful,” she noted, adding that residents are considering bringing back the village watch patrols following the incident.

‘Taking the law into their own hands’

According to Israeli rights group Yesh Din, a Palestinian in the West Bank who files a police complaint against an Israeli only has a 1.9 percent chance of it being “effectively investigated, and a suspect identified, prosecuted and convicted.”

The group has noted that settler attacks involve “many Israeli citizens and includes acts of violence, damage to property, takeover of Palestinian land, and other offenses.”

These attacks are “part of a calculated strategy for dispossessing Palestinians of their land,” the group added. According to the UN, at least 150 settler attacks were reported in 2017 in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Since Ahed’s arrest, right-wing Israeli leaders have called the teenager a “terrorist” and have advocated extreme measures against the minor.

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s ultra-right education minister, said that Ahed and the other women who appeared in the video should “finish their lives in prison.”

Oren Hazan, an Israeli lawmaker from the Likud party, told the BBC this week: “If I was there, she would finish in the hospital. For sure. Nobody could stop me. I would kick, kick her face, believe me.”

According to Manal, these calls for violence and harsh imprisonment of the Tamimi family have emboldened the settlers. “They want to take the law into their own hands and punish the Tamimi family,” she said.

However, Manal made sure to express the seemingly unwavering strength that Nabi Saleh’s residents are famous for. “We are not afraid of the settlers or the army,” she said. “But we will make sure that what happened Thursday night will never happen again.”

About Jaclynn Ashly

Jaclynn Ashly is a journalist based in Bethlehem, Palestine. You can find her on Twitter @jaclynnashly

But please, remember well, that THESE sorts of graffiti sprayed death threats and racist epithets that are sprayed on the walls and houses of Palestinians by the psycho-fanatic settler thugs is NOT NEW…they’ve sprayed such evil for years and years…I viewed them back in 2004 and they were already old…in Hebron and elsewhere in the WB…this is NOT a new/phenomenon which is really hard for many Americans to wrap their brains around so well has the brain washing/propaganda mill functioned for Decades and decades. We need to de Program ourselves. There oughta be a ‘re-education’ effort developed to help move westerners along…particularly geared for US-ians, imo.

Bassem Tamimi: “Israeli forces killed more than twenty of my family members, arrested and tortured me, shot my son and now they are holding my wife and daughter, what do you say to that?” The reporter admitted he had no reply.

EXCERPT:

“When you encounter face to face the systems of oppression as they are imposed by Israel on Palestinians, the shock leaves you searching for words. The dirt roads, dusty in summer and muddy in winter; the cold iron gates; the cement blocks; the metal revolving doors that start and stop abruptly, even violently and as you try to pass through; and the darkened windows from which orders are barked at people. The waiting areas where you sit waiting endlessly, knowing that the authorities have complete control of your time and you have no recourse, exposed to the elements, too hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. Life under Israeli rule means total disregard for your humanity and dignity. It means that any rude kid with a gun can and will control your life. Living as I do in the sphere of the privileged, I encounter this each time I travel to see my Palestinian friends.”

True that. The mask of the victimized jew worn by the israeli jews for 70 years has been violently ripped off and torn to shreds by the zionist colonialist settlers. they are not victims, they are victimizers. They have become exactly what they accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being – antisemitic, murderous heathens.

You’ll find via this link below what the great Albert Einstein thought of zionists and of the creation of Israel by zionists in a letter to the New York Times back on December 4, 1948, cosigned with 26 other Jews, all well known New York City residents.

The letter’s purpose was to ask the US President not to receive Menachem Begin so he would not give to the world the impression that the USA was supporting the Begin’s zionist government…

«TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.»

On a personal note, I doubt immensely that the New York Times would publish such an article against Israel in 2018, and probably as far back as a few decades ago.

Cazador- the letter’s purpose was to discourage American zionists, American Jews and American nonjews from giving support or welcome to Begin. No presidential visit is mentioned. And to inject that nonhistory is not truthful.

Thanks for the point of information. It made me follow the link and read the entire letter, to discover that Hannah Arendt was a co-signatory, and that – whomever it was formally addressed to – it gave a stark warning of what was likely to happen if a thug like Begin and his band of Fascistic terrorists ever got into power. It also gives a graphic description of the Deir Yassin massacre. But of course these facts are as nothing compared with cazador’s error.

Thanks for the point of information. It made me follow the link and read the entire letter, to discover that Hannah Arendt was a co-signatory, and that – whomever it was formally addressed to – it gave a stark warning of what was likely to happen if a thug like Begin and his band of Fascistic terrorists ever got into power. It also gives a graphic description of the Deir Yassin massacre. … ||

“Micky Rosenfeld, spokesperson for the Israeli police”
“He added that the police had opened an investigation into the incident”
Ah that Micky Rosenfield the pop up” Israeli” from Finchley wheeled out to state that there will be an” investigation”. As with 99.9% of Israeli investigations into settler attacks in the Zio Fascist mindset simply stating that there will be an “investigation” means that there has been an investigation.And why do these Untermenschen keep complaining.
Listen to this ex Cockney clown being shredded:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fb2vxo07Z4

A lot of neighborhoods around the world have one or two ‘neighbors from hell’ who make life miserable for the people unfortunate enough to live near them. Multiply those neighbors from hell by tens or even hundreds of thousands and you can just imagine the nightmare Palestinians experience every day.

Whether or not Nabi Saleh is in Israel (it is not) in no way explains how someone might divine the identity of the vandal. Neither the author nor yourself know if it was a settler, an Israeli, a local resident or anyone else.

@mondonut “Neither the author nor yourself know if it was a settler, an Israeli, a local resident or anyone else.”

While we’re in the realm of speculation, permit me to speculate as to how the police investigation is going. The Israeli police could be going from house to house in the nearby settlement of Halamish, looking for a half-full spray-can of matching paint. Or they could be weighing up the best moment to plant a half-full spray-can of matching paint on a member of the al-Tamimi family. Or they could be doing absolutely nothing whatsoever towards discovering and apprehending the perpetrator(s).

Why would an Arab Israeli (to use your term) do it? What do you mean by “an International” and by “a migrant”? And what would be their motives? It is possible that it was a false flag operation by Palestinian villagers, but that would involve a lot of people in a conspiracy. On the other hand, Israeli squatters have the means, the motive and a long record of similar behaviour.

What possible motive could a local person, international, or migrant have to commit this crime? There’s never any international reaction or public outcry to this kind of harassment and intimidation, so where’s the motivation for a false flag operation at this level? You think Palestinians paint graffiti on their own houses and walls and wait for the international outrage? They’ll be waiting forever. Israel kidnaps little children and imprisons them and the world sits back and snoozes; a little graffiti is not going to wake them up.

Israelis practically invented false flags, certainly perfected it, so it’s no wonder they scream false flag at everything. Bunch of disgusting land thieves and child diddlers, it’s good to know they were busy for at least one night painting walls rather than torturing school children.

“What I do know is that declaring this the work of settlers is incorrect.”

If there was the remotest chance of this being the work of a Palestinian or Israeli Arab the idf would be out in full force ransacking and looting houses in the search to murder him, or her, on the spot.

The only time any time for an investigation is claimed to be needed is when it’s an Israeli Jew.

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